[DigitalToday reporter Jinju Hong (홍진주)] A solo bitcoin miner secured a reward worth about $200,000 by mining a single block alone. Even in a market dominated by large mining companies, cases continue to emerge in which an individual miner takes a payout worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from a single success.

Decryption, a blockchain media outlet, reported on Aug. 3 local time that a solo miner generated bitcoin block 960804 alone and received a total reward of 3.15689830 BTC. Based on the bitcoin price at the time, it was worth about $200,000. The payout combines a base block reward of 3.125 BTC and transaction fees of 0.032 BTC. The block included 4,243 transactions, and the creation time was recorded as early morning on Aug. 3.

This was the 317th successful solo mining case through CKPool. Dr -ck, an anonymous developer who operates CKPool, posted the winning address and sent a congratulatory message to the miner.

The success differed from typical hobbyist small-scale mining. Dr -ck said the miner used "a hashrate that changes very significantly, and likely appears to have been rented." The mining computing power is estimated to have risen to as much as 100PH at one point.

This is closer to renting and deploying large-scale computing power as needed than to running small mining equipment owned by an individual over a long period. At the time, the total bitcoin network hashrate was about 924 exahashes per second, and 100PH corresponds to about 0.011 percent of the entire network.

With that level of computing power, calculations show the odds of finding a block average about once every 64 days. By contrast, a hobbyist miner using typical 100TH/s equipment could face an average wait of about 172 years to find a block.

Mining pool services provide a basis for individual miners to compete with large mining companies. Services such as CKPool support users in joining the competition to generate blocks by connecting mining equipment without having to operate their own bitcoin full node. If a block is found, they take 2 percent of the reward as a fee.

Recent cases of individual miners making a "lucky block find" have continued. In April, a miner using hashrate of about 70TH/s received a reward worth $225,000. Earlier examples also included rewards worth $210,000, $266,000 and $365,000.

Such cases show that individual participants have not been completely shut out even as mining difficulty has risen. An analysis says the main factor driving differences in reward size is changes in the dollar value caused by bitcoin price fluctuations, rather than the probability of mining success.

Bitcoin mining rewards remain at 3.125 BTC per block until the next halving. The next halving is scheduled after about 89,000 more blocks and is expected in spring 2028. After that, the block reward falls to 1.5625 BTC.

Dr -ck stressed that the bitcoin network is operating normally even as the market is unsettled by a recent security controversy related to Coldcard hardware wallets. He said this block was generated "amid the chaos."

Bitcoin traded at about $63,700 on Aug. 3, up 1.1 percent from the previous day. Some prediction markets are also factoring in the possibility that bitcoin could fall further and test the $55,000 level, and attention is expected to continue on changes in the mining ecosystem along with the future price trend.